Episode summary
Why Some Family Offices Quietly Outperform Institutions
How I Invest With David Weisburd
· · 31 min · Hosts: David Weisburd · Guests: Michael Phipps
Summary
Michael Phipps frames New Republic Partners as a conflict-minimized, open-architecture multifamily office built to give families institutional resources without proprietary-product bias. The firm, which he says has about $2.5 billion in AUM, designs portfolios around three buckets: growth, income, and diversification, then matches those exposures to each family’s risk tolerance, liquidity needs, and spending rate.
A central argument is that traditional 60/40 portfolios may no longer get the diversification investors think they are getting from fixed income alone. Phipps says income assets can still provide cash flow, but families should reserve part of the portfolio for truly diversifying strategies such as absolute-return hedge funds, and he distinguishes those from hedged-equity strategies that belong in the growth bucket. He also argues that portfolios should be built to handle drawdowns, because the real value of diversification is behavioral as well as mathematical.
He is constructive on co-investments, saying they can lower cost, reduce the J-curve, and deepen GP relationships, but only with disciplined underwriting. Phipps also makes the case that family offices under $250 million often face structural limits in access, infrastructure, and governance, making a larger platform more effective for many families.
Key takeaways
- Michael Phipps says New Republic Partners uses open architecture because proprietary products create conflicts and can distort manager selection.
- Phipps argues fixed income may provide income but not enough true diversification, especially after episodes like 2022.
- He separates hedged equity from absolute-return hedge funds, placing the former in growth and the latter in diversification.
- Phipps says a $200 million family with a 3% to 5% payout need might be built around 65% growth, 20% income, and 15% diversification assets.
- He believes family offices under $250 million often lack the scale for broad access, infrastructure, and governance unless they join a larger platform.
Notable quotes
“we're seeking to stand apart from the mix by being open architecture in our investment platform”
“we design portfolios that match that family's risk tolerance. It also aligns with their investment time horizon, income, and liquidity needs”
“I think family offices um are need to be thinking a little bit more broadly of how they you know define what is a growth asset”
“you just need to dedicate a a portion of your portfolio to something that's truly diversified”
How the episode opens
What is the simplest way to explain New Republic Partners and what problem did you see in the ecosystem that you wanted to go after? For New Republic Partners, we are a multif family office and founded by a group of seasoned investment professionals and two prominent multigenerational families here in the southeast. And really our aim is to offer clients the expertise, the resources and scale of a multi-billion dollar family office.
And we we started that multif family office because there was a a shared appreciation of the advantages of an MFO between the founding team and those two families where we could offer customization, minimize conflicts of interest and also attract some top tier professionals while maintaining and getting that scale that's necessary to access institutional quality investment opportunities and have a deeply resourced team and infrastructure which we didn't think um at the time uh was in the industry where if it was out there I think we would have sought it as a single family office and we sought to create it uh at New Republic.
Give me a sense for where New Republic partners sits today at a AUM level. — So New Republic today sits at about two and a half billion in assets under management. Twothirds of that is discretionary and mandate a third non-discretionary. And as a firm we're we're headquartered in Charlotte with offices across the southeast. We have 27 employees as a firm today. You said you wanted to minimize conflicts. In what ways are other multif family offices conflicted? Talk to me about that.
So for MFOs or RAS more broadly, we're seeking to stand apart from the mix by being open architecture in our investment platform. We don't have proprietary products or vehicles that I'm incented to put a client's portfolio or family's portfolio in.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- open architecture multifamily offices
- portfolio construction
- alternatives and co-investments
- fixed income diversification
- family office liquidity and drawdowns
Companies and tickers mentioned
- New Republic Partners
Watch the episode
Watch “Why Some Family Offices Quietly Outperform Institutions” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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How I Invest With David Weisburd, this episode and its artwork belong to David Weisburd. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
